NFLPA* disputes the notion that an agreement is close

AP

It seems like only this morning that Drew Brees, one of the leading voices in the NFLPA*, said the players and owners were “very close” to working out an agreement.

Now other leading voices of the NFLPA* take issue with Brees’ brazen use of the “C” word.

“Are we close? I wouldn’t say that at all,” one NFLPA* executive committee member told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports.  “Drew is the eternal optimist, and yeah, it’s closer than it was a week ago. Could it happen quickly? Yes. But I’d be extremely surprised.”

Another NFLPA* source tried to throw cold water on all the optimism: “Don’t read too much into that. We’re not there yet, and there are still a lot of issues in play.”

The news comes at the end of a long negotiating session which NFL.com’s Albert Breer describes as “very difficult.”  That is similar wording to what we heard at the end of last week’s session.

(Things always seem to be positive during the labor negotiations except when they actually negotiate.)

So what’s going on here?

Clearly,  following the labor play-by-play is not good for the average football fan’s health. Just remember every message is coded.

This message from the players appears to be:  We won’t agree to the hanging deal points just because we’re approaching the finish line. Silver’s sources insist that other issues besides the rookie wage scale need to be worked out including where the “legacy fund” for retired players will come from, in addition to health care and player safety concerns.  Some details of the “all revenue” pie model reportedly remain up in the air.

Silver writes that player negotiators are convinced owners have leaked to the press that things are “close” in an effort to create a sense of inevitability. That, in turn, is supposed to lead to public pressure for a deal.  (Brees and friends apparently tried to turn the tables Wednesday.)

In response to what the players believe are owner leaks, the NFLPA* chose to leak their own concerns to Silver in a possible effort to get the owners to compromise on a deal.

This is all part of the game.  A tiring and confusing game that has one clear loser: the fans.

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Ravens running back Ray Rice remains unsigned as the team’s franchise player, but coach John Harbaugh says there’s no doubt in his mind that Rice will be capable of contributing as soon as he shows up.

Harbaugh said on NFL Total Access that he’s not worried at all about Rice being prepared to play.

“It’s the business of football,” Harbaugh said. “I don’t worry about Ray Rice.”

The business of football means that Rice wants a long-term contract that pays him in the range of what the highest-paid running backs in football make, but all indications are that the Ravens are not willing to pay Rice anything like the contracts that Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson got last year. Rice probably won’t get the contract he wants and will likely end up signing the one-year franchise tender for a guaranteed base salary of $7.7 million in 2012.

Even if Rice doesn’t sign until after training camp, however, Harbaugh thinks he’ll be the same old Ray Rice in time for Week One.

“Ray will be ready to go when the season starts, he’ll be in shape and he’ll be Ray Rice,” Harbaugh said. “He’s one of the hardest-working guys, and I have complete trust in Ray.”

It doesn’t come out until August, so you can strike it from the early phases of your summer reading list.  But few football books figure to be more entertaining than Sapp Attack, the first written offering from former NFL lineman Warren Sapp.

Gary Shelton of the Tampa Bay Times recently previewed the 314-page effort, in which Sapp apparently perfectly captures his essence:  “[H]e is loud, and he is profane, and he is stepping on a different set of toes every time you turn a page,” Shelton writes.  “You may like it, you may hate it, and you may stay up late laughing about it.”

Sapp shares his views on his coaches and teammates, telling it like he sees it.  Sapp says he chose to play college football at Miami over Florida State in part because coach Bobby Bowden referred to one of his other players as a “fat ass.”  Sapp says that his first NFL coach, Sam Wyche, tried to motivate “by making snide comments, by belittling people.”  Sapp says that “Tony Dungy put the damn cake in the oven, and then Jon Gruden came in and put the icing on it.”

Sapp’s views on the men he played with include outing former Bucs defensive tackle Brad Culpepper for cheating.  Sapp claims that Culpepper, now a lawyer and one of the many former players suing the NFL for concussions, used silicone to make it harder to be held.  “Now that [Culpepper] also is retired, I’ll confess for him that he was one of the people who did that,” Sapp writes.  “He practically bathed in silicone before a game.  Trust me, if he had ever tried to hug his wife before a game, she would have slipped right out of his arms and gone straight up in the air.”

Um, does that make Sapp a snitch?

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about the book is that the cover art features an image of Sapp wearing the Super Bowl ring that, according to his bankruptcy filing, he lost several years ago.  Though it’s quite likely that the picture was digitally altered, it’s a detail that Sapp will surely have to explain at some point to one of Sapp’s colleagues in the judiciary.

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As a rookie, Dexter McCluster eventually found a home with the Chiefs as a slot receiver.  Last season, the team moved him to running back.  During offseason workouts, he’s back at receiver.

He soon could be back at running back.

Adam Teicher of the Kansas City Star writes that the Chiefs are struggling to find value from McCluster, a second-round pick in 2010.  “We feel like he knows how to play running back, and we can put him over at running back at any point in time, but we felt like he needed the work at wide receiver,” coach Romeo Crennel recently said, via Teicher.  “So we gave him the work at wide receiver.  If we need him at running back then we’ll put him at running back.  Probably what that will do is open it up for us to be able to use him however and whenever we need him at whatever position.  He’s taken to it really well.  He’s been enthusiastic about it, so that is working out pretty well for us.”

McCluster described himself simply as an “Offensive Weapon” two years ago, and that appears to be how the team plans to use him.

The best bet for the Chefs, given the arrival of former Browns offensive coordinator Brian Daboll as the new offensive coordinator in Kansas City, could be to use McCluster like the Browns used Josh Cribbs under Daboll — as a return specialist, a receiver, a running back, and Wildcat quarterback.

McCluster generated 844 yards from scrimmage in 2011, up from 280 in 2010.

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Running back Justin Forsett isn’t the only veteran free-agent who’ll get a chance to catch the attention of the Houston Texans on Wednesday.  Veteran free-agent wideout Mike Sims-Walker will work out on Wednesday for the defending AFC South champions, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN.

Sims-Walker played four games with the Rams last year before being released and returning to Jacksonville last season.  After two games back with the Jaguars, a knee injury landed him on injured reserve.

In 2009, Sims-Walker made a big splash with 63 catches for 869 receiving yards and seven touchdowns for the Jaguars.  The next season, his production dropped by 20 catches and more than 300 yards, but he added another seven touchdowns.

The Jaguars let him leave via free agency in 2011, opting not to apply a restricted free agency tender.

The Texans have needs at the position given the decision to cut Jacoby Jones and the recent knee injury sustained by Andre Johnson, which is expected to knock him out for the balance of offseason workouts.

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Though it’s Memorial Day and not Thanksgiving (Metta World Peace set me straight on that), we’re thankful for the Cowboys and their cornucopia of cornerbacks.  From whether the Cowboys will trade cornerback Mike Jenkins to when they will trade him if they ever decide to do so to whether they’ll slide one of their corners to safety in order to keep as many of them on the field as possible, the Dallas defensive backs have helped us fill up the page on what otherwise would have been a slow news day.

On that last point, Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com writes that Orlando Scandrick has scant interest (actually none, but I was having a Chris Berman moment and couldn’t resist using “scant” after “Scandrick”) in playing safety.

“Not happening,” Scandrick said.  “Brodney Pool, Gerald Sensabaugh and Barry Church are our safeties. Orlando Scandrick, Morris Claiborne, Brandon Carr and Mike Jenkins are our corners.”

We can’t imagine Scandrick refusing to play safety if being a safety gets him on the field and being a cornerback leaves him on the bench.  For now, he professes ignorance as to the specific strategies that will be employed.

“I have no idea what they have planned,” Scandrick said.  “I feel like the best players are going to play regardless of your contract, draft status or who you are.”

Given the various types and forms of coverages, Scandrick can play like a safety while still telling himself that he’s a corner.  In Cover Three and Cover Four, corners typically join the safeties in patrolling the deep zones.  In pure man coverage, it doesn’t really matter whether a guy is a corner or a safety.  For Scandrick, as long as he’s not covering a deep zone in Cover One or Cover Two or otherwise providing help over the top for Carr or Claiborne or Jenkins, Scandrick plausibly can continue to regard himself as playing cornerback.

Even if he technically isn’t.

AP

I rarely address a subject that one of the other PFT writers has handled.  But sometimes I just can’t keep quiet.

MDS pointed out earlier today the item from Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback regarding former Colts Vice Chairman Bill Polian’s belief that the proposed extension in 2012 of the trade deadline from Week Six to Week Eight would have helped the Colts improve on their final record of 2-14, given that Polian would have shipped a third-round pick to the Broncos for deposed starter Kyle Orton.

Apart from the simple fact (as MDS noted) that Polian could have had Orton for nothing by simply making a waiver claim for Orton after he was cut in November, the idea that the Colts would have given up such a high pick in the hopes of getting a few more wins — and in turn not having the ability to land their next franchise quarterback — by picking up a guy whose contract was set to expire makes no sense.

At all.

Polian has been surprisingly good and informative during his time on the air with ESPN.  He comes off as far more likeable than the experiences of plenty of agents and reporters would otherwise suggest, and personally he has become one of the few voices on the network to which I will stop whatever I’m doing and listen.  But I don’t want to hear that Polian would have given up a third-round pick for Kyle Orton in the hopes of salvaging a lost season that has helped secure the team’s future.

If Polian is telling the truth, it makes owner Jim Irsay’s decision to move on much more understandable.

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Any football fan will admit that, if forced to choose between having players who performed badly on the field or behaved badly away from it, they’d take the latter in the flash of a stun gun.

And so for the fans of the Lions, who have gone from being 0-16 to having players assigned jailhouse numbers that possibly include 0, 1, and 6, there could be far worse things than having multiple players who are getting in trouble with the law.  But it’s starting to become a bit of problem, with 2011 first-round draft pick Nick Fairley and 2011 second-rounder Mikel Leshoure now having two legal entanglements — each — during the offseason.

Our buddy Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press chronicles the (alleged) crime spree, and he bravely calls it like it is, despite the fact that the Lions are the only team he covers.  For example:  “Of the Lions’ five-member 2011 draft class, only Doug Hogue has successfully avoided drama this off-season, which begs the question, what exactly did the Lions see in him?”

Beyond Fairley and Leshoure, seventh-round tackle Johnny Culbreath was busted for marijuana posssesion, and second-round receiver Titus Young (who perhaps would benefit from the mellowing effects of marijuana) was barred from OTAs for busting a teammate, Steve Smith style.  To make matters worse for Young, Birkett writes that the second-year wideout was lollygagging during Phase One of the offseason program, when most of the coaching staff was absent.

Still, the strength and conditioning coaches were allowed to participate, and it’s on them to light a fire under all players.  Young clearly has an edge to him; someone with the organization needs to get his attitude harnessed and refined and pointed in the right direction at the right times or he’s going to end up being yet another high-round pick that the Lions wasted on a receiver.

All things considered, these are far better problems to have than a roster full of players who can’t get out of their own way between the white lines.  Veteran leadership and proper coaching discipline will be critical to getting this team to the Super Bowl — and to keeping multiple members of it from playing for the Mean Machine.

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Ravens third-year nose tackle Terrence Cody’s weight is a constant concern because he’s ballooned to 400 pounds before. The Ravens list him at 349.

Cody trimmed down to 335 last year, but in hindsight doesn’t believe it was the best decision.

“Losing that weight last year kind of made me a little weak because I lost it a little too fast,” Cody said. “But working out with [strength coach] Bob [Rogucki] … I am feeling good. … I feel good, I look good.”

Per Aaron Wilson of the Carroll County Times, Cody has “restructured his bulk” and lost a significant amount of body fat since his rookie year. Wilson says Cody is “noticeably leaner” at OTAs.

Per Cody, his focus continues to be “Just taking care of my body. Most of all, it’s just eating right and just staying in shape.”

Still just 24 years old, Cody teams with Haloti Ngata to form a nearly 700-pound interior on the Ravens’ defensive line. Baltimore ranked second in the league in run defense last season. If this is the year Cody realizes his potential, the Ravens will make a strong push to unseat San Francisco for the No. 1 spot.

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The Cowboys say they won’t trade cornerback Mike Jenkins, despite the fact that they tried to during the draft. But a trade ultimately makes the most sense for both sides. The Cowboys could get a mid- to late-round draft pick before Jenkins’ rookie deal expires, and Jenkins can go play out his contract year as a starter as opposed to the dime back he’d be in Dallas.

ESPN’s John Clayton reported on SportsCenter over the weekend that if a trade is going to happen, it won’t occur until late July or August.

“If they’re going to deal [Jenkins],” Clayton said, “they’re going to deal him during training camp.”

The theory here is that a cornerback-needy team might get desperate in camp, especially if one of its top corners goes down in practice or a preseason game. Jenkins is young, and his base salary is an affordable $1.052 million. He’s been a Pro Bowl-caliber cover guy when healthy.

And that’s another issue: Jenkins isn’t healthy yet. He underwent significant surgery on his right shoulder in January, and won’t be medically cleared to resume football activities until training camp.

The Colts and Lions are known to have interest in Jenkins. Clayton mentioned the Tennessee Titans as another potential trade partner.

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With the finagling of millions of dollars in public money for the construction of a football stadium comes the reality that the primary tenants of the new venue will now be subject to the whims of a public body that will oversee the construction and management of the facility.

According to the Associated Press, a new group of public employees will oversee the new Vikings stadium.  The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, with three members named by Governor Mark Dayton and two by Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, will nail down a 30-year lease with the Vikings and also ensure that the place gets built.

And so, even with the Vikings kicking in $477 million, they’ll have to deal with bureaucrats who may, from time to time, decide to flex their muscles, simply because they can.

It’s another reason why it makes sense for sports teams to find a way to build their own stadiums on their own property.  Surely, these ventures can be managed in a manner that makes them profitable, and if the team builds its own building, the team gets to keep all the profit and run the place in the manner it sees fit.

Of course, the fact that so many teams choose to deal with public authorities demonstrates the value of free money.  For the Vikings, putting up with the MSFA is a relatively small price to pay in exchange for nearly $500 million in public funds.

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Patriots center Dan Koppen played less than one half of football in 2011 thanks ‘to a broken ankle.

Koppen told Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald that the ankle is fully healed — “I don’t even feel it anymore” — as the Patriots go through their offseason activities. Koppen seems to appreciate being back at work.

“It’s just tough to sit around and watch it,” Koppen said. “But you’ve got to be mentally strong enough to probably handle that and say, ‘All right, injuries happen, and you’ve just got to move on from that.’ It’s just tough to sit there and watch.”

Koppen may still have some watching to do. Dan Connolly did a good job at center in his absence and Koppen seemed unlikely to return as he made the rounds as a free agent. Nothing developed elsewhere, though, and Koppen signed a two-year deal to stay in New England.

The deal didn’t come with a starting job attached and Connolly’s been called the favorite to hold onto it. Connolly could move to guard if Logan Mankins hits a snag in recovery from his knee injury, but Koppen will have to beat him out otherwise. He’s physically ready to try and the depth will be a good thing for the Patriots either way.

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A dozen years ago, the Patriots benefited tremendously from the availability in round six of a quarterback who would become one of the best to put a helmet over his widely varying types and lengths of hair.  But Tom Brady didn’t slide; he wasn’t expected to go much higher, if any higher, than the sixth round.

In 2012, cornerback Alfonzo Dennard did a draft-day free fall after an unfortunate incident from the prior weekend involving an alleged punch to an actual cop.  Though the drop wasn’t a surprise in light of his arrest, Dennard would have been draft much higher but for the arrest.

In the end, it could end up being another coup for the Pats.

Dennard’s agent, Brian Murphy, explains to Tom Curran of CSN New England that the former Cornhusker remains in good spirits despite enduring a major disappointment.  “His reaction to the whole process was mind-boggling to me because he said, ‘Things happen the way they’re supposed to happen.  And this is all happening for a reason and all I can do is prove everyone wrong and show that I’m a great cornerback, a great teammate and a great man,’ and he wants to reward the Patriots for the faith they showed.  I wouldn’t describe him as down and out,” Murphy told Curran.

Murphy’s predictable assessment meshes with recent words from Dennard’s new coach and his old one.  Both Bill Belichick and Bo Pelini believe in Dennard.  “He’s a perfect representative of [his hometown] and they’re so proud of him,” Murphy said.  “When I met him, it was always, ‘Yes, sir; No, sir; Yes, Mr. Murphy.’  When I asked what was important to him, he said taking care of his mom and representing his town well.  It was a neat experience watching how the people in town reacted to him.”

Still, Dennard continues to face the felony charge of assaulting a police officer.  Dennard’s arraignment is set for Wednesday.  A trial date could be set during the hearing.  And even if the alleged conduct was out of character, Dennard still needs to deal with the aftermath of what could end up being one of the dumbest things he ever did, or will ever do.

AP

The Cowboys’ insistence that they won’t trade cornerback Mike Jenkins strikes some as puzzling, considering that Dallas’s two biggest offseason moves were signing cornerback Brandon Carr and trading up to draft cornerback Morris Claiborne. But the Cowboys’ philosophy is simple: You can’t have enough good cornerbacks.

Members of the Cowboys’ coaching staff told Ian Rapoport of NFL.com that in today’s NFL, they may have four cornerbacks on the field on a regular basis, with Carr, Claiborne, Jenkins and Orlando Scandrick all getting plenty of playing time.

“This league has become a passing league,” Cowboys defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson said. “Look at what the quarterbacks are doing and how the game is kind of evolving a little bit, how they protect the quarterbacks, and rightfully so. The more cover guys you have, the better off you’ll be on defense. So any time we can put cover guys on the field in a pass situation and let those guys match up, I think it helps our defense. We’ll look to do that some if the opportunity presents itself.”

With the proliferation of the passing game resulting in NFL defenses using dime packages more frequently, four cornerbacks on the field at a time will become increasingly common. It makes a lot of sense that the Cowboys want to have four cornerbacks they can count on.

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But for the lawsuits and arrests, last week’s back-and-forth from players on franchises that used to be division rivals would have gotten a lot more interest and attention.  Still, the comments from 49ers quarterback Alex Smith about the perceived reason for Panthers rookie Cam Newton’s uncanny stats in 2011 were noticed by key players from each team.  Panthers linebacker Jon Beason verbally smacked Smith down, and 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis defended his quarterback.

The numbers seem to cut against Smith’s theory, according to Peter King of SI.com.

“I could absolutely care less on yards per game,” Smith said last week, to get the controversy rolling. “I think that is a totally overblown stat because if you’re losing games in the second half, guess what, you’re like the Carolina Panthers and you’re going no-huddle the entire second half.  Yeah, Cam Newton threw for a lot of 300-yard games.  That’s great.  You’re not winning, though.”

As King points out, Newton threw for more yards last season in the first half of games than in the final two quarters, with 2,071 and 1,980 yards, respectively.  Also, Newton threw for only 523 of his rookie-record 4,051 yards when they Panthers trailed by between nine and 16 points.

There’s another relevant reality that doesn’t arise from the numbers.  Attaching any member of the 49ers’ front office, coaching staff, roster (except for Smith), and fan base to a lie-detector and asking whether they’d prefer the first overall pick from 2005 or 2011 to be the San Francisco quarterback, and the answer would be unanimous.

The same outcome would happen in Carolina, and perhaps the best news for Panthers fans is that Newton has taken the high road, saying nothing in response to Smith’s assessment.

AP

Sunday’s sports pages from sea to shining sea not only included an Associated Press column regarding gambling on NFL games, but also contained an AP article on the future of youth football.  The item from Chris Jenkins provides an accurate snapshot of the practical consequences flowing from the combination of a generation of helicopter parenting and the advancement of medical knowledge regarding the long-term effects of mild brain trauma.

With or without the concussion lawsuits and the suicides of Dave Duerson and Junior Seau, mothers and fathers would continue to shy away from exposing young children to the more immediate risks of playing football.  If padded youth tackle football will survive over the long term (and, frankly, for kids under the age of 12 I’m not sure that it should), efforts must be made to ensure that coaches will be more responsible.

Plenty of the men who give their time to the coaching of youth football undoubtedly have good intentions and use appropriate methods, placing the well-being of their players over the “win-at-all-costs” mentality that infects coaches at every stage of the sport.  But some coaches make youth football their own personal NFL, allowing an obsession with victory to cloud common sense and, at times, basic decency.

Forty years ago, youth coaches routinely denied their players water during practice, kicked them in the asses when they were loafing (I still have a cleat mark or two in mine), and corrected alignment errors by jerking them by the facemasks into the right position.  Though the days of football coaches laying hands on kids have long since ended (except for Mike Vanderjagt . . . allegedly), plenty of youth coaches still insist on a ruthless, aggressive approach from boys who should still be boys, in every way.

I’ve witnessed it.  Several years ago, Florio Jr. had soccer practice.  Nearby, a youth football team was padded up.  The coach was barking at kids no older than 10 like they were adults, cajoling them to be “mean” and “nasty” and to hit the other team so hard that when they cross paths at the mall during high school the opponents will still be intimidated.

It’s shameful and it’s irresponsible and it needs to end, or youth tackle football eventually will.

And that’s where the NFL’s assumption that changes made at the top of the sport will trickle down could be erroneous.  Pro football coaches are accountable to the league office.  College football coaches answer to the NCAA.  At the high-school level and below, who’s really paying attention to what these coaches say and do?

That’s why it’s critical for efforts like the Lystedt Law to be successful in every state.  Without external bright-line rules regarding concussions, coaches who are largely left to their own devices will continue to be able to do things the way they’ve always been done, regardless of any advancements that are made to protect the grown men who play the game.

At every level below college, the challenge for football will be to adapt to the new expectations of society and parents and players, or to face the fact that players and parents and ultimately society will choose another path.  Though it won’t kill the sport completely, it will make it harder for colleges and NFL teams to identify and develop the best of the best available players.

Thus, every college team and every NFL franchise has a direct interest in finding ways to ensure that the stewards of the youth and high-school versions of the game behave responsibly, prudently, and properly when it comes to ensuring the health and safety of the boys and young men entrusted to them.